Klaus Albrecht Schroeder, director of the Albertina in Vienna, said 1987 about this often reproduced image: "It is hard to deny, that the aggression- and vulnerability-symbolism of Helnwein's well-known and multiple-varied selfportrait of a bandaged head, eyes blinded by surgical forks and mouth opened wide to form a scream; is something of a self-evident metaphor for an elementary human stipulation of today's existence."